Monthly Archives: December 2012

The following is a pre-edit excerpt from Mark Wilson’s second novel “Nae’body’s Hero”; due for publication in late February 2013. Copyright Mark Wilson 2013

Kim has tracked down someone she’s been looking for for two decades:

Chapter 23

Kim

Kim, back in her spot on the roof took aim at the first of the three agents/bums huddled around their fire. It was kind of them to huddle so close together, it made her task so much simpler. She looked down the sights, took a breath and squeezed the trigger three times rapidly. The three darts found their marks and the men lay huddled once more on the ground this time, their disguise looking more convincing than ever. The darts should put them out for eight hours or so. It was seven and a half hours longer than she needed.

Kim pulled her black baseball cap down low, slung the rifle strap over her chest and descended the fire escape. A final check of the perimeter and she was ready to move in. Drawing her pistol, Kim stepped inside the unlocked entrance to the firehouse. She followed procedure and entered the rooms one at a time, silently checking each one and working her way to the room on the second floor. Kim encountered no one. The guys outside seemed to be the entire guard detail. This wasn’t unusual but she had expected to find someone inside the building. Perhaps an interrogator. Reaching the door without incident Kim wiped the sweat from her eyes with the back of her gloved hand then slipped the same hand into her small satchel, producing a flexible-fibre camera. Slipping the camera under the door she viewed the inside of the room on the little monitor.

Clearly once the firehouse’s bunk room, it was now empty except for one bed and some medical monitors. Strapped to the bed was a person, restrained in a fashion which suggested a highly dangerous individual. His head was covered with a dirty white cotton bag. This guy’s being lined up for some serious questioning. Almost the instant Kim wondered why the person on the cot wasn’t moving she noticed the mask protruding under the bag and the line to a canister with a name she didn’t recognise. They’re keeping him sedated.

Content that the room was empty save for her target; Kim took a few seconds to compose herself and try to slow her thumping heart. It didn’t work. This is it. Kim entered the room slowly, carefully, confirming that it’s restrained and sedated occupant was the only person present. Kim raised her gun; aiming at the bag-covered head she approached the sleeping man. Finally.

Kim approached him, pressed the gun to his temple through the bag, cocked the gun and whispered to him like a lover. “Goodbye you sick son of a bitch”. Kim Baker said a silent prayer of thanks and began squeezing the trigger.

I’m in the final 20 percent or so home stretch of my second novel Nae’body’s Hero and thought I’d give you a wee look at the characters. I love when they do this at the start of Star Wars novels, they call it their “Dramatis Personae”.

Weegie Tarot? C’mon.
Never been a fan of Weegie-isms or Tarot.
I find that programmes like Rab C Nesbitt and films like The Angel’s Share are invariably written by some middle-class writer sitting quaffing £150 bottles of wine and reminiscing or romanticising about “the Glesgae beanter” represented on screen as a dumbed-down “We’re one of ye” ode to a section of society which I’m sure seems funny in its harshness and hardness to the wine-quaffer but is scandalously misrepresented. I’ve always hated the “Mary-doll” on camera, Morningside off approach of the “we’re just like you”, even though we’re mocking you brigade.
Also, I have no interest at all in fortune-telling, Tarot or any other mystical stuff.

Thus I was a bit sceptical of a book titled Weegie Tarot. The only reason I read this book is because the author and I chat from time to time on social networks and she’s a lovely woman.

Thankfully Colette’s warmth, wit, love of the people and intelligence are demonstrated wonderfully in this book. Colette has dragged up old memories and new ideas and painted pictures of them with such wonderfully descriptive words, effortlessly melding a very real sense of Glasgow and its people with the world of Tarot. She uses her words skilfully and concisely, poking fun at, showing the strength and the weaknesses of; but always displaying the warmth and heart of her characters.

Colette has managed to avoid the usual Scottish-isms that usually annoy me in Scottish books. She’s kept her narrative Scottish in tone, without alienating her non-Scottish readers. This is not easy to pull off, just ask Irvine Welsh.

I read this in one sitting and I suppose the best thing I can say is that I loved it, and I think other people should read it; Scottish or not, Mystical or not; you won’t regret it.